Kiddicare bought by etailer Worldstores just two months after Endless acquisition

Worldstores aims to push the mother and baby retailer to its next stage of growth after private equity firm Endless returned it to a pure play online retailer when it bought it in July.

The etailer, which runs home and furniture websites Worldstores.co.uk, Casafina.com and Modern.co.uk, said Kiddicare fits in with its family customer demographic.  

Worldstores joint chief executive Joe Murray added: “Kiddicare is a fantastic strategic fit for us - its customer base is very similar to our core Worldstores demographic and is at a life stage where it’s buying for the home, so there are many cross marketing opportunities.”

Kiddicare chief executive Chris Yates, who joined the retailer when it was bought by Endless, said: “Kiddicare has an important place in the nursery market and Worldstores is the ideal owner for the next phase of its growth.”

Worldstores will keep Kiddicare operating as a standalone website. It is understood Worldstores will begin selling Kiddicare’s 3,000 products on its other websites and will expand Kiddicare’s limited furniture offering, which has been identified as a potential area of high growth.

Morrisons sold Kiddicare to Endless for £2m in July after the grocer’s strategy to turn it into a multichannel retailer - opening ten bricks and mortar stores-failed. Morrisons had bought the business in 2011 for £70m.

Endless bought the business from Morrisons, and shuttered all its stores because they were “heavily loss-making”, the firm told Retail Week in July.

It is believed no decisions have yet been made about what will happen to the Kiddicare management team under its new ownership.

This month it emerged that Kiddicare’s losses ballooned to £127.8m from pre-tax losses of £12.6m the prior year, in the final year of Morrisons’ ownership, according to documents filed at Companies House.

But Endless partner Darren Forshaw said the work over the last couple of months has returned it to an “attractive business”.  

He added: “It was clear to us before our investment that Kiddicare would be an attractive business once it was returned to its core operations and this has proved to be the case.”